TOTAL INDISCRIMINATE ABUSE OF THE USE OF POISONS ON AN ESTATE. POST FROM PROTECT THE WILD

 Hunt Investigation Team (HIT) has published an investigation into malicious practices by a Northumberland shooting estate.

It showed that Allendale Estates has used a “notorious” rat poison to kill not just rats but raptors and other wildlife too. As a result, the bodies of dead animals were left “strewn” next to areas of public access including a wildlife reserve.

On 4 November, HIT published its investigation into Allendale Estates. The group said that tip-offs by members of the public led it to the village of Welton, Northumberland, on the Hadrian’s Wall Trail, where much of the land is owned by Wentworth Beaumont, viscount Allendale. There, HIT found a trove of dead wildlife, maliciously-set poisons, and illegal traps.

HIT said it found sachets of brodifacoum left exposed in open countryside. Brodifacoum is a rat poison that has gained notoriety because toxicology reports on dead raptors have repeatedly turned up lethal levels of the substance in their bodies. Following its legalisation in 2016, the number of times coroners have found brodifacoum in dead raptors has rapidly multiplied.

Allendale Estates was no different. HIT said it:

“documented five dead buzzards, one dead barn owl, a dying badger and numerous dead corvids, in the immediate area around the chewed Brodifacoum sachets and dead rats.

“Testing by WIIS [Wildlife Incident Investigation Scheme] confirmed that the rats, the barn owl and the badger all had lethally toxic levels of rodenticide in their bodies. The buzzards were too predated to test, but if they too were poisoned, the animals who predated on them would also have ingested poison.”

And video shared by the group showed some of these bodies and the openly scattered brodifacoum sachets.

WIIS’s quarterly report for 2023 contained its post-mortem results. It clearly stated that brodifacoum was “likely” the cause of death of a badger, barn owl and rat.

In addition to the poison, the group said it found illegal traps while on the estate. Some of the “hundreds of Fenn traps” still had the bodies of stoats, rabbits, and small birds such as thrushes and blackbirds in them.9